Naruto 584 – Yakushi Kabuto

First off, apologies for the delay. It was said there wouldn’t be a chapter release until the end of Golden Week, but apparently a chapter popped up sometime in the last few days and I didn’t catch it until now due to finals. =[

Going right in, I have to say that this chapter actually surprised me a little bit. I mean, I neither expected another chapter dedicated completely to Kabuto’s past nor the fact that Kishimoto Masashi would actually go into detail regarding why Kabuto’s “mother” did not recognize him. Considering there was some discussion and questions regarding the latter, it was nice to see the elaboration, and everything just goes to show the lengths that Root would go in order to meet their goals. Combining this with the dialogue between Orochimaru and Kabuto, and this chapter was actually one of the more interesting of the recent chapters. In addition, we get further elaboration as to how the two meet, and a quick go through of all the things Kabuto has done for Orochimaru up until the Akatsuki infiltration, which was snuck in pretty well.

I know I’ve mentioned how the flashbacks have felt a tad out of place the past few chapters, but with the flashbacks seemingly coming to a close and this well done chapter, I’m getting the slight feeling that I was potentially too harsh in my comments regarding them. Though, this might perhaps be due to fact that there’s been a lot more flashbacks than expected, and thus more depth explored than I thought there would be. In some ways, I do feel a little sympathy for Kabuto now, but I guess most of that is due to the fact that we’re seeing a lot of involvement from Danzo and Root, as well as Orochimaru, both of whom are arguably more villainous than Kabuto, and thus take the ire away from him a bit.

Regardless, it is kind of a pity that we’re finally getting the real back story now, especially when it’s pretty much written in stone that Kabuto is not going to live past this particular arc. At this point, we’ve pretty much flashed back his entire life up until this point, and if that’s not akin to a death flag and the flashbacks people are rumored to get when they pass on, I don’t know what is.

On another note, I did go “Hm…” a bit at the explanation Orochimaru gave to Kabuto as to why he chose to save him, as well as why he does the things he does. It makes sense, but at the same time feels kind of… strange? I can’t really describe it, but the words and phrasing he said didn’t seem to quite fit his personality that well. Perhaps it was partially a bluff or maybe just something lost in translation though. Either way, it’s not that big of a deal, but I wanted to point this out to see if anyone else got the same feeling, or if it’s just me.

As I said last chapter, it’s quite possible that he is just bluffing in order to keep Itachi from killing him and screwing things up. Orochimaru has always been good at bluffing and deceiving people in order to set things up for himself better while forcing the opponent to be more cautious since Orochimaru tends to put them in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation with his bluffs.

You’re forgetting that third type of audience who pretends to care about the story. You know, the ones who accept everything as awesome despite how detrimental or contradictory something may be to the plot.

(sigh) I can’t believed I had pity Danzo the moment he died. Seeing more of his infamous actions while leading the root makes me want to think “it is good Danzo is dead” while looking in disgust how his actions were responsible for the tragic past of our major antagonists- Pain, Kabuto, and now Sasuke.

This is where I am a bit curious in how many trusts were betrayed while Danzo was alive- Danzo betrayed the trust in the orphannages ano not to mention the trust of the 4 Shinobi villeges when using a genjutsi on a Samurai leader and attempting to destroy the Mist’s only Byakuyagan, souring the relationship even further.

I have to say, this is one of the darkest elements that is rare to find in Anime/manga, for love ones to kill each other on complicated reasons. I would like to know what other manga plot has this.

Anime related!
Hey everyone, just wanted to tell you about Naruto’s eight OVA. It was absolutely fantastic. It’s basically Shippuuden Naruto entering the Sand Village’s Chuunin Exams to finally leave the title of Genin. It’s mainly about Naruto vs. Konohamaru in the finals (the title of the OVA is “Honoo no Chuunin Shiken! Naruto vs Konohamaru!”), but the highlights are defintely just how overpowered Naruto is against all the other Genin chums (everyone’s like “Dude! He’s the one who defeated Pain and saved Konoha! WTF is he doing here?!“).
Many people have always complained about Naruto’s current ninja status, so this OVA answered that completely (and added some more, lol…) Seriously, it was 13 minutes of pure laughs. If you’re slightly interested in it, let me say Go for it!

Also (was on an OVA marathon), I found this Sage Naruto vs Sasuke OVA, which aired around February. It’s a little hard to find the original in Youtube, but it’s there. It’s pure action fanservice!

Also, Zanibas, the anime is going to enter the War arc this week…Surely you may have been asked this by now, but just in case, You interested in blogging that..?

Back On-Topic now, lol
Pretty much the same comments about this: Let it end already; let’s go back to the more interesting stuff, like, I dunno, choose: Uchia Madara & Kages, Uchia Brothers or Tobi & Naruto gang.

Dammit, I would have preferred for Danzou to simply cheat using Shizui’s eye :P All those psychological tactics are meaningless when you have such a weapon!

Of course Da5id, no one dies permanently here or anything of the sort. Still, in its defense, I do say that the eight OVA does have some certain plot points that could perfectly fit into the main story. They even talk about the upcoming War too. As usual, it’s up to each fan to incorporate that into the storyline or not.

The Naruto vs Sasuke OVA, on the other hand, is more of a ‘what if’ scenario, but a pretty believable one at that too, haha. It even has some (brief) Kabuto and Tobi (war outfits) cameos.

It’s fine and dandy that Naruto might become a Chuunin in a movie, but movies/OVAs mean nothing to the original story line. It’s just made-up stories as we go along to feed the fans. You won’t ever see it being mentioned in the original manga/anime that he’ll have become a Chuunin in there. :P (Until it actually happens in the real story).

Lol I’m not buying this thing at all. This plan to turn her against Kabuto is so laughably elaborate. Why did they specifically have to take each other out? We don’t even know what constituted them “knowing too much”.

And if the Root wanted Kabuto gone they did a terrible job, letting him escape the assassination and live in Konoha for who knows how many years.

Random ninja: “Uhh, hey Danzou shouldn’t we actually kill that Kabuto kid? You know, follow through with the plan?”

You bring up a very good point. Kabuto’s been in Konoha all this time near the start of the manga after all.

Looks like even Kishimoto makes some errors in consistency. Unless of course Orochimaru was lying to Kabuto when he told him Danzo was trying to get him killed just to make him join his side. That would explain when Danzou left Kabuto alone all this time.

I doubt any ROOT members outside of those at the orphanage that day knew who Kabuto was. Remember ROOT is a clandestine organization, not all members know each other. So the cleanest way to remove both threats would be to have them eliminate each other. This is common strategy employed in many a spy story.

As for Chunin exams… Most likely the only the ninjas there that fateful day Kabuto was recruited that were still alive were Oro and Danzo. Any eyes and ears in the village wouldn’t know to report him to Danzo. Not to mention Oro’s own infiltrators in Konoha to protect Kabuto’s cover. Remember as far as ROOT is concerned the plan succeeded.

Yeah, its obviously not what Kishi originally planned but it does fit.

I still don’t buy it. You can’t tell me Root was too stupid to not affirm the assassination and yet still have the organization hold some form of prestige. Even if it were practical to have members take each other out, making Kabuto and his mother fight was too elaborate and comically spiteful. Plenty of nameless ninjas existed within the group and yet Kabuto and his mother have to be pitted against one another? Needless and contrived drama.

And even if Kabuto escaped death, walking straight into the heart of Konoha and living there is completely inexcusable. Even if most original members from Root were dead or inactive, Danzou wasn’t. There were bounties on regular ninja criminals, so with Root held in such high regard they should easily have their own set of people to look out for. And we saw no mention of Oro’s followers taking extra precaution for Kabuto, so if Kishi were to make this theory true then it’d be a blatant lazy retcon.

Two things that I’ve come to conclude about the whole Kabuto flashback interlude:

1). I don’t like how it gets in the way of the Sasuke/Itachi vs. Kabuto fight, since it feels like it’s breaking up a rhythm and that it seems like Kabuto’s giving this really winded story that has them standing around doing nothing (though for all I know, this entire flashback was actually a summary lasting 30 seconds or less in real time).

2). Otherwise, I’m kind of digging the mad scientist spiel. It brought back the kind of insidiousness that pre-Time skip had, I mean personally. It also seems to make Kabuto contrast Orochimaru in that instead of always shedding an old form to be like-new again, it’s this guy who wants to keep adding layers upon layers of other people’s identity to himself. So instead of being a snake metaphor that Orochimaru likes to use as symbolism, Kabuto is like a Dragon maintaining his personal hoard.

Kabuto, Kabuto, Kabuto, how many flashbacks now have we had about this character that signifies that he is GOING TO DIE!? Personally I don’t care about the trials and tribulations Kabuto went through and why he became Orochimaru’s first love slave. Die already and get back to the fight. I’m really anxious to see how Kubo is going to spin this new jutsu Izanami and what abilities it will have. He’s already taken from Japanese mythology with all of the Uchiha’s techniques i.e. Izanagi, Tsukiyomi, Amaterasu. Lore states that Izanagi-no-Mikoto is the goddess of both Creation and Death. if Izanagi can change destiny and Izanami can decide it then my guess is that he transfer the death of someone to someone else if it works in a pair.

At this rate Kishimoto should change the manga’s name from “Naruto” to “Kabuto” since he appears to feel the need to go through the whole of Kabuto’s family tree in recent chapters, for example his mother and now his god father orochimaru. While I am at it, why not talk about Kabuto’s Great grandads, granmothers and ancestors, actually on second thoughts – NO. Please back go to Itachi & Sasuke fighting ermmmm……Kabuto

In other news, blood prison movie, subbed, is out o/ Will you be blogging it, Zephyr? Even if just impressions is fine; I wanna know if it’s any good. The first two Shippuuden movies were great (1 better than 2), then 3 and 4 came along which were taxing to watch…

Not worth it then; any particular reason why? I disliked movie 4 because they showed Naruto as extremely retarded (Kage Bunshin-Rasengan doesn’t work? Try it again! and again! and agaaaaaiiin!) and movie 3 because it was all over the place…

My contract with my internet provider is, sadly, not unlimited memory, and even streaming eats up so many megabytes >_<

I personally think that Orochimaru’s just really good at taking advantage of people’s weaknesses. For Sasuke it was power for revenge, while for Kabuto it was a need for an identity. Orochimaru basically said what Kabuto wanted and needed to hear.